


you make me feel so young

by deadhoods



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: #dicksoutforkentparson, 5+1 Things, Domestic Fluff, M/M, but it's mainly kent parson's fault, mentions of jack's drug abuse, shitty has a 3 minute cameo, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-30 07:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8523385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadhoods/pseuds/deadhoods
Summary: Jack and Bitty move in together, throw a house party, and maybe, kind of, slightly get married, all in that order.
  “Listen the fuck up, Jack Zimmermann—” Shitty begins. 
  “Actually,” interrupts Jack, “it’s Jack Zimmermann-Bittle. Get it right. Goodbye.”
  And then he presses ‘end call’ and Bitty looks at him wondrously. 
  “I thought I couldn’t be any move in love with you,” he says honestly. “I was wrong.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> i've been totally besotted with omgcp for the past two months and finally got off my ass to write a shitty fic that only pales in comparison to the webcomic! also i love kent parson i wish i had a dick so i could get it out for him. just sayin'.  
> warnings for slight past kent/jack angst, actual satan eric bittle and one sentence of bad french because i do not speak french, not even a little bit.

**i.**

“I’m sorry,” says Jack for the millionth time in approximately fifty-seven minutes of their Skype call. “I should have been there.”

“Stop apologising, sweetheart,” Bitty replies, gently but firmly. “I said it’s okay, and besides, you already told me. And apologised each time. It’s not like you just didn’t show up after me expecting you to or anything. You had a game. It’s fine, Jack.”

“But, it was your—” starts Jack, and then shuts his mouth because Bitty is giving him that look of his which says, Mr. Zimmermann, if you say what I think you’re about to say, I’m going to fly over to Providence and kick your ass, and Jack knows Bitty can be especially fierce when he wants to be. “Okay, okay,” Jack says instead. “Sorry. I mean. Um. Sorry for saying sorry. Oh, crap. Sorry. Whoops.”

“Jack Zimmermann, what am I going to do with you?”

Jack’s lips quirk upwards into that Jack Zimmerman not-quite smile-but-still-a-smile smile and Bitty beams back with an Eric Bittle war-ending-world-peace-happiness-inducing smile. Jack likes the small dimples on his cheeks and the way his eyes crinkle up and the thing that always gets Jack about them is how warm they are. They’re this lovely brown colour, like maple syrup and chocolate, which is just as well because Jack loves maple syrup and chocolate, if they’re low sugar and Fairtrade, and Bitty, even if he’s not low sugar and Fairtrade.

“You could come live here in Providence. With me, I mean,” Jack says carefully.

“Oh Jack,” says Bitty, pressing his hands to his face and rolling around on his bed with Señor Bunny before he realises he’s jostling the camera. “I would love to but you know I can’t do that. I don’t want to barge in. I’d be a nuisance to all your teammates and I bet they wouldn’t even be allowed to eat my pies!”

Jack furrows his eyebrows and chews on his lower lip. “No, I mean…” He trails off and Bitty waits patiently for Jack to gather his thoughts. Bitty knows he feels too much, thinks too much, too intensely, and he’s not the emotionless robot everyone jokes he is. He’s bad at putting his feelings in words and Bitty understands that, which is one of the billion things Jack likes about him. “I mean, maybe we could live together in Providence. Just the two of us.”

“What? Are you—are you asking me to move in with you?”

“Um,” says Jack. He fiddles with his T-shirt. He never gets this nervous on the ice. It’s stupid. “That depends. Are you going to say yes?”

“I don’t know,” says Bitty. “That depends. Are you asking me to move in with you?”

God, he’s such a little shit, but Jack feels a grin creeping up onto his face, mirroring Bitty’s.

“Fine, yes,” he says. “Eric Bittle, will you move in with me?”

“Hmmmmmmmmm,” says Bitty, for, like, five minutes straight because he’s _such_ a little shit. “Fine, yes.”

It feels awfully anticlimactic. They stare at each other and then Bitty, no joke, lets out a shriek that probably shatters every glass in the general vicinity and says, “I’ve gotta go tell everyone that we’re moving in together, oh my gosh!” and disappears from the screen as he runs out the door, leaving Jack with cheeks that hurt too much from smiling. Seconds later, he pops up again and says, “Also, oh my gosh, we have so much to do! There’s so much to buy! A new oven! Ooh, striped curtains! No, wait. _Floral_ curtains! A potted cactus! Silk bedsheets! Can we get marble sculptures outside? Lions would look _so_ cool. Oh, and a dog! We totally need a dog!”

“Bittle,” says Jack through barely suppressed laughter. “Deep breaths, Bittle.”

“Okay, okay, I might have gotten slightly overexcited there,” Bitty says.

“Yeah, slightly,” says Jack.

Bitty pouts, and then there’s a moment where he goes all soft and says quietly, “It’s been a long day. You should get some sleep.”

“You need it more than me,” says Jack. He remembers when he’d graduated. It felt like turning over the page of a book, except on the other side, Jack already had his story written out for him. Bitty’s got blank pages, but maybe that’s better.

“Hell no,” says Bitty. “I’m pulling an all-nighter. Chowder’s gonna help me pick out the perfect pair of curtains for the kitchen.” Jack’s probably got a look on his face, the captain-y face he used to pull like that time Ransom twisted his ankle and still tried to hop onto the ice or the time Shitty, in a drunken fit of madness, thought it might be a good idea to cut off his flow, because Bitty says, “I’m going to be fine. Go to sleep, honey. I’ll still be here tomorrow. I’ll talk to you when you’re up, yeah?”

Jack sighs. “Don’t stay up too late, then.”

“Curtains wait for no man,” says Bitty. “Good night, Jack.”

“I love you,” Jack says helplessly.

“Me too,” says Bitty. “I love you too.”

And he holds his hand up to the camera and Jack presses his fingertips against Bitty’s on the screen. For Jack, everything had already been written out for him. His path had been carved and sometimes it felt like the hardest thing in the world to just walk down the road. But Bitty—Bitty has nothing and everything. No expectations, no shoulders that burden the weight he never wanted. He has pages and pages waiting to be filled ahead of him and Jack and Bitty, they’ve got the rest of forever to write in them.

 

 

**ii.**

“Close your eyes,” says Jack, “and hold out your hand.”

Bitty stares at him. “Nuh-uh,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m not falling for this again. Shitty’s tried this trick on me before. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me, and I will not be shamed today!”

“Goddammit Shitty. What did I say about putting your dick on my stuff?” mutters Jack and then grabs Bitty’s hand. “It’s not like that, Bits. Just—just close your eyes, okay? I want to show you something.”

“Fine,” Bitty says, rolling his eyes good-naturedly before letting them close, and Jack can’t resist leaning in and placing a soft kiss on the tip of his nose because Bitty is stupidly cute and Jack is stupidly weak. “When I open my eyes, you’d better not be naked, Jack Zimmermann.”

“Me being naked would probably be a better surprise than what I’ve got you, eh?” says Jack. Bitty, a grown-ass college graduate who plays ice hockey and takes checks like a champ and makes a mean rhubarb pie, giggles and lets Jack lead him away, replying, “Don’t flatter yourself, honey. You’re not _that_ good-looking.”

“Not what you were screaming last night on the couch, Bittle,” Jack says smugly, if only to see the flush that rises on Bitty’s face to his ears.

He takes Bitty to the kitchen and pushes the door open, letting Bitty go in first because he’s a gentleman, and bites his lower lip to stop himself from smiling when he says, “Open.”

Bitty makes a noise that’s a cross between a banshee screaming and the time Holster had ‘accidentally’ kneed Ransom’s balls in an ‘act of brotherhood, this means we’re bonded for LIFE now, Rans!’ and okay, Jack definitely has to smile.

“B-Betsy? Is that you?” Bitty says, rushing forward to kneel on the tiles and envelope the oven in his loving and welcoming embrace. There’s a gift ribbon stuck on the top of it and Bitty pats it like it’s his child or something. Which it kind of is, Jack’s not going to lie. He can already tell Bitty likes the oven more than he likes him and he’s definitely not going to tell Shitty any of this because like hell is he going to get chirped for getting cockblocked by a kitchen appliance.

“More like Betsy’s grandchild,” says Jack. “And it—“

“—she—“

“ _—she_ actually works. I thought it’d just be something nice. For you.”

The _thank you_ is unspoken with words, spoken in other ways, silent, and Bitty understands because he always does.

He looks at Jack like he’s just hung the moon. “Jack, you didn’t have to.”

“But I wanted to,” Jack says.

There are a lot of things Jack has to do. Stick to a diet. Morning skate every day. Make his father proud. Live up to the hopes everyone has for him. Win. There are a lot of things Jack doesn’t want to do. Morning skate every day when he’s in bed with Bitty and it’s warm and they have their legs tangled up together and Jack has his head resting on Bitty’s chest, listening to him breathe, just knowing he’s here. Make his father proud, because Jack wishes he didn’t spend his childhood trying so hard to do only that. Live up to the hopes everyone has for him because he’s not Bad Bob Zimmermann’s son, he’s Jack. He’s Jack Zimmermann and he deserves to be Jack Zimmermann and he deserves to be himself, Bitty will tell him when it’s raining outside at night and Bitty has Jack’s face cupped in his hands and he says it so genuinely, so quietly that Jack can’t help but believe.

But there are a lot of things Jack wants to do. A lot of things that Jack can do now, that he couldn’t before. And he hopes, with every inch of his heart, that making Bitty happy is one of them.

“Honey, she’s beautiful,” says Bitty.

Jack pushes Bitty to the floor, cradles his head before he falls, and kisses Bitty, hot and slow, and Bitty reaches up to thread his fingers through Jack’s hair, kissing him back with equal force and measure, and Jack feels like he’s being turned inside out.

“Yeah, he is,” says Jack, and Bitty murmurs, “Stupid,” before he hooks his fingers in the loops of Jack’s belt and grins against his mouth.

They christen the new oven in the kitchen. Bitty moans about tainting Betsy 2.0’s innocence and then he’s moaning for a completely different reason when Jack picks him up, easy as pie, and carries him to the bedroom to christen their new bed.

 

 

**iii.**

The first thing Jack hears when he opens the door is, “Man, I didn’t know they had trees in Providence!”

“Kent,” says Jack. “Why are you here?”

“Housewarming party, bro,” says Kent, muscling his way into the house. “Sweet crib. I like your cactus. Very classy.”

The housewarming party had been Bitty’s idea. Like hell Jack would invite the Samwell team to his new, stainless-couch, puke-free-carpeted house by choice (he loves them to pieces but as someone who has lived through numerous Epikegsters, he knows better) but Bitty can be very persuasive when he wants to, and that had lead Jack sending out a mass invite on the group chat and dealing with the angry complaints of ‘Seriously? Smart-casual? _Seriously?_ ’ except with more swearing and poorer syntax. He doesn’t, however, remember seeing Kent’s name in the group chat. Or on the invite list. Or anywhere at all.

“Okay, let me rephrase,” says Jack as Kent flops onto the couch and puts his feet up on the coffee table. “Who invited you here?”

Kent regards him with a shielded look. It’s not…that Jack doesn’t want him here. Jack thinks there will always be a part of him that wants Kent in some way or another. It’s more like he doesn’t think he’ll be able to handle Kent being here.

“Bittle invited me,” Kent says finally.

“I invited him,” Bitty yells from the kitchen. “Honey, be a good host and get him a drink!”

Uh. Okay. So apparently, Kent and Bitty are friends now? Sadly, not the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to him. Jack goes into the kitchen, grabs a can of the beer Kent likes and a glass of water for himself, sending Bitty a We’re-Going-to-Talk-About-This-Later, Specifically-Why-the-Hell-are-You-BFFs-with-Kent-Parson, and Bitty shoots him a bright, non-shit-giving smile back. Goddamn, Bitty.

“I hope that’s vodka,” says Kent, eyeing Jack’s water.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Jack replies. He tosses Kent his beer and settles on the couch next to him as Kent pops it open, taking a sip.

Awkward doesn’t begin to explain how, well, awkward this is. Jack hasn’t spoken to Kent since the last Epikegster when Kent had come in like a hurricane and fucked everything up in his wake. Kind of impressive, actually. He’s played against Kent a few times in matches and every reporter likes to ask Jack how Kent’s doing and if he’s excited that they’re going to be together again, but no one seems to understand that they’re just not like that anymore. And that, _that,_ Jack doesn’t even know how to begin to explain what _that_ is. Everything’s so complicated when it comes to Kent. And awkward.

Awkward is what you call having dinner with your boyfriend’s parents. Or accidentally complimenting your manager on how cute his son is when the photo on his desk is of his daughter. Or getting your hockey stick stuck in your skates. Or bumping into a Canadian because neither of you can stop apologising to each other. Sitting next to Kent Parson, whom you’ve spoken about but not to in a very long time, is beyond awkward. It never used to be like this, but Jack can’t do that anymore. He can’t keep comparing what used to be and what it’s like now. He just. Can’t.

“Nah, no disappointment here. ‘S’all good,” says Kent. “Cool place. Suburb-y.”

“Bits—um, Bittle wanted ‘suburb-y,’” Jack says.  

“Oh,” says Kent, which is one of the only two things that can make a conversation awkward-er than awkward, and then, “cool,” which is the other one of the only two things which can make a conversation so awkward that it transcends the realm of awkwardness and into silent thumb-twiddling and oh god, small talk about the weather.

Jack’s never felt more relieved when the doorbell rings.

“I’ll get it,” he says, and Kent says, “Cool, man,” and Jack lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

Shitty and Johnson and the Samwell team all burst into the house after bone-crushing hugs, enough hair-ruffling to last a lifetime, and ‘Awesome house, bro!’s. Shitty heads straight into the kitchen to discuss the technicalities of floral curtains with Bitty and everyone else just mills around with glasses of tepid water and juice because Jack had explicitly banned the presence of alcohol. He likes his new Italian leather couch vomitless and beer is such a bitch to get out of the tufting. Trust him, he knows. All too well.

When the party gets a bit livelier and Jack’s watching with a weird sort of proudness by the side, leaning against the wall, Kent sidles up to him. The air is tense around them, mildly uncomfortable and obstinate. But it would probably be weirder if it weren’t, Jack thinks, because the last time they saw each other, properly, where no one grabbed at each other’s throats or stormed out was when Jack was in hospital and Kent was sitting by his bedside. So, yeah.

“I can’t say I never imagined Jack Zimmermann settling down in a cute little apartment with a potted plant and a balcony and a pie-baking trophy wife,” says Kent, and Jack gives him a shitty look, which makes him laugh slightly. Some ease returns to Jack’s body. It’s been so long and so many things have changed, but Kent still laughs the same way as he used to, or what Jack thinks he can remember, anyway. His eyes crinkle up and he has a dimple, just on one cheek, and there is the Kent Parson patented single lock of blonde hair is curling up from his forehead. “What’s next, huh? A puppy? A golden retriever? Two little Zimmermanns running around with crayons and hockey sticks?”

Jack makes a non-committal noise. He doesn’t say anything because there is nothing else to say, nothing else he can say. Kent had his chance. Jack had his chance. They both blew it. Kent knows that because he leans into Jack, nearly imperceptibly—but Jack notices because he’s spent a good part of his life noticing Kent, every nuance of the way he moves and the lilt of his voice when he, um. And—and touches his elbow and says quietly, “I just always thought it would be us, you know?”

“I know,” says Jack. “Me too.”

When Jack is with Kent, it’s like the world stops spinning around them. Kent just has that kind of effect; he used to make Jack feel as if he were stuck in a daze and he still does. It’s loud in the apartment with pretty much all of the Samwell team and Jack is ninety-percent sure Ransom and Holster are screaming out old Britney Spears songs in the kitchen, but with Kent pressing against him, it’s silent.

Everything is different now, and yet somehow, Kent is the same person, the boy who used to be Jack’s best friend. He uses the same gross cologne he did when he was eighteen, over the softer scent of aftershave, even though he has a pretty pathetic five o’clock shadow, and he still makes Jack forget. He used to do that; he used to kiss Jack so slow and filthy and when Jack was with him, he would forget all the expectations, all the pressure, what a disappointment he was and all the things he did wrong. He’d forget what a fuckup he was because when he was with Kent, when their fingers were laced together and Kent kissed him on his neck and everywhere his mouth could reach, he couldn’t think of anything except Kent and Kent’s hands and Kent’s lips and how Kent made him feel so intensely with every cell in his body.

Then, Bitty looks over at them where Kent is resting into the warmth of Jack’s body and Jack is letting him, and he waves, and Jack feels like his head’s ascending from the surface of cold water. All the air rushes back into his lungs and the noise into his ears. If Kent makes him forget, Bitty makes him remember. Forgetting never did anything good; it was avoidance and it made the problems build up until everything came crashing down. Bitty makes him remember that he can’t run away from his problems, but Bitty also makes him remember that he’s surrounded by people who love him and he doesn’t have to be alone anymore. When he kisses Bitty, when he fucks Bitty, when Bitty is sitting next to him with their knees touching and he’s trying to help Bitty memorise his French flashcards, when Bitty is baking in the kitchen and he comes up behind him and hugs him around the waist and lifts him up because he’s so small and Jack just can, he wants to remember. Jack likes a lot of things about Bitty, but that’s one of the few things he loves.

Bitty smiles at him in that way, sunny and reassuring, which means Jack has a look on his face, and it’s instinct to smile back. Jack is aware he can breathe again and, vaguely, of Shitty waving Kent over because Chowder’s too shy to ask for an autograph and Bitty turning away to whip up some cream in a bowl.

“You’ve got a keeper over there, Zimms. I’m jealous,” Kent says.

“Yeah,” says Jack. “Yeah.”

Kent looks at him and Jack looks right back, through his lashes, and it’s so weird that Kent is taller than him. He remembers when Kent used to have to tip-toe to kiss him. It’s weird and it’s right and everything seems like it’s going to be okay. That’s the thing about growing up; in the end, Jack realises that not everything will be perfect. He won’t ever have a past that he thinks about at night and tries to pretend never happened and Kent Parson won’t ever not have been the most important person in Jack’s life, once, and he can only run for so long until he reaches the end of the Earth. But things will be okay.

Kent heaves off him with a push, like it’s hard for him to leave, and says, “Okay, enough of this. I’m gonna spike the punch with this beer. This party is boring,” and Lardo shouts, “Great idea!” from where she’s plastered to Shitty’s side and peels herself off to magically procure a bottle of…something. To be fair, they lasted about ten minutes more than Jack thought they would. He has to give them credit for that.

“Don’t get too drunk, Parse,” calls Jack as Kent walks away. “You’re a lightweight.”

“Up yours, Zimmermann,” yells Kent.

About half an hour later, Dex and Nursey are arguing over who’s doing a better job of fanning a passed-out, star-struck Chowder and Lardo is unequivocally kicking everyone’s sorry butts in various drinking games. Jack helps Bitty take his pies out of the oven and says, “Thank you.”

Because he’s Bitty and he knows Jack better than Jack knows himself, he says, “I’m glad y’all got it sorted out. Sometimes, the only way to get over your ghosts is to confront them.”

“That’s deep,” says Jack, and then it clicks in his brain and he says, accusingly, “You planned this. You—Bittle, you are the devil.”

“Shh,” says Bitty, his eyes twinkling. “Let’s keep that a secret between you and me…eh, Mr. Zimmermann?”

Bitty closes his eyes when Jack leans down to kiss him over the chorus of cheers from the team, cupping the back of Bitty’s neck with the hand that isn’t covered by an oven mitt and Bitty murmurs into his mouth, “It took me two days to come up with that, y’know.”

“Thank you,” Jack repeats sincerely. “You’re the best.”

For a moment, he feels Kent’s gaze burning into his back. Then, Lardo says, “All right, you little shits, who’s next?” and for the first time in years, it’s gone.

 

 

**iv.**

“We should,” says Bitty, slowly and a little bit slurred, “we should, like, elope…or something…”

It’s dark, the only light in the room dimly flitting from the television. Bitty’s head is in Jack’s lap and Jack has a hand stroking his hair absentmindedly. Jack has these nights every so often where he can’t sleep, where he’s too scared to sleep because he’s afraid what of what will wake him up, and usually, he’d deal with it by himself, maybe go out for a run or read, but Bitty had insisted on staying up with him. They’d gotten through the first three Harry Potter films (“I can’t believe you’ve never seen Harry Potter!” “Um, he’s the guy in…One Direction, right?” “Oh, sweetheart…”) and Bitty had started nodding off halfway through the fourth. Not that Jack minds, of course. He appreciates Bitty just trying, just being here for him.

For all his life, Jack thought that the only one who could fix things was himself. He thought that he could do everything himself and maybe he was too prideful, maybe he was terrified of what would happen if he told anyone else. Bitty makes him realise it’s okay to ask for help. Bitty makes him realise he isn’t alone and reminds him when he forgets. Nowadays, Jack tries his hardest to remember. It’s doing good. He’s doing good.

Jack lets his hands curl around Bitty’s jaw, so small and delicate in his palm. “Yeah, we should,” he says. “Eric Zimmermann. Or Jack Bittle. Jack Zimmermann-Bittle. I think I like that one, Bittle. What do you think? Bitty…?”

But Bitty is already fast asleep, and Jack just smiles and leans down, kissing his forehead.

 

 

**v.**

When Bitty wakes up, the bed is empty but warm and the sound of water sloshing in the bathroom tells him Jack’s in there, showering or brushing his teeth. That boy has an unhealthy fascination with dental hygiene, Bitty thinks fondly as he rolls onto his side and waits patiently for Jack to return, playing on his phone. About five minutes later, he shoves his phone under the pillow and makes his eyes super tiny, pretending to be asleep, as Jack emerges in a pair of loose sweatpants, which still manages to make his butt look a-maz-ing. The power of Jack’s magnificent ass never ceases to both astound and arouse Bitty. Then, Bitty’s eyes trail up and something hotter crawls into his belly when he realises Jack is shirtless, skin damp and soft-looking. Jack leans down to get a T-shirt from the drawer and Bitty waits for him to find one before he says, “Jack, honey,” and Jack starts so hard he bangs his head on the cupboard above. Bitty laughs because Jack looks so silly and cute when he pouts, and makes grabby hands, saying, “Jaaaack, come here, I miss you.”

“You can’t miss me when I’m right here,” says Jack, rolling his eyes and going over anyway.

“Come _here,_ ” says Bitty and tips his head up to meet Jack in a kiss, close-mouthed and innocent, which gets filthy quick when Jack bites his lower lip. Bitty eagerly concedes, parting his lips, and Jack kisses him dirty, kisses his mouth and his neck and gets between his thighs and makes Bitty moan so loudly he’s probably woken up half the neighbourhood.

“ _Eric,_ ” says Jack after he’s sated and stretched out like a satisfied cat, dazed and sleepy.

“Jack,” Bitty says, against Jack’s mouth, touching his nape, and he shudders because Jack never calls him that and it makes him inexplicably fuzzy when he does.

They kiss languidly for a while longer because it’s a Sunday and they both have all the time in the world to lay in bed, basking in the sunlight through the windows and each other’s presence. Eventually, Jack checks his phone, grabbing it from their bedside, and frowns at the screen. Bitty strokes away the crease between his eyebrows, touches the corner of his mouth with his thumb.

“Apparently, I have twelve missed calls from Shitty, fifty-six texts and, oh my god, ninety-nine-plus messages from the group chat!? What is going on?”

“Maybe you’d better check them,” says Bitty, biting the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing.

Jack skims through them and reads them out loud in his best Shitty impression and Bitty nearly falls off the bed because it’s seriously the worst thing he’s ever heard in his entire life and he’s heard Dex trying to belt out the high note in Whitney Houston’s _I Will Always Love You_ wasted off his ass.

“‘Saturday night, dude! Come party with us!’ ‘Jackeroo, where ya at, bro? Pick up your goddamn phone once in a while!’ ‘Oh my fucking god, Jack, you’d better be shitting me right now because if that’s a fucking ring in the pic Bitty’s just Instagrammed I’m gonna flip a fucking couch.’ ‘Jack, you little _shit,_ I cannot fucking believe you! I can’t believe you fucking ELOPED without telling me. Without telling us! Not cool, bro. Not cool at all, Jack Zimmermann. You are the scum of the Earth. The lowest of the low! Oh, and congrats. Happy for you. Still annoyed, but happy for you. Call me the fuck back when you pull your dick out of Bitty’s ass long enough from consummating your marriage to ex-fucking-plain why, a) I wasn’t invited, and b) why the hell I wasn’t the best man.’”

Jack blushes at the last one and Bitty finds it impossibly adorable the way the flush climbs up Jack’s cheeks and to the tips of his ears. Super famous star of the Providence Falconers with millions of fans and looks like a total badass on ice who can score goals like it’s breathing, but still blushes at the mention of sex. Absolutely adorable.

Bitty watches Jack tap on his phone and grin, then he places the phone on the bed. _Calling Shitty Knight,_ it says, on speaker, and it rings for five seconds before Shitty picks up and there’s so much yelling and screeching in the background as he says, “Listen the fuck up, Jack Zimmermann—”

“Actually,” interrupts Jack, “it’s Jack Zimmermann-Bittle. Get it right. Goodbye.”

And then he presses ‘end call’ and Bitty looks at him wondrously.

“I thought I couldn’t be any move in love with you,” he says honestly. “I was wrong.”

After the sixth time Shitty calls Jack, Jack turns off his phone and smirks up at Bitty between his trembling legs. They don’t get out of bed until mid-afternoon and Bitty thinks back to all those years ago. He’d been so wrong. Love is so easy, so simple when he’s with Jack. He’s happy. Jack is happy. And that’s all they need to be.

 

*****

Buried under all of Shitty’s texts, there is one that Jack does not read out. It is a voicemail from Kent and Jack’s thumb hovers over it for a few seconds, mustering the courage to click ‘open,’ and there’s the low hum of static until Kent says,

“First of all, fuck you. Fuck you, dude. Can’t fuckin’ believe you got hitched with telling your BFFL, man. That’s a dick move. Second of all, you’re totally getting married again. Like, you’re totally throwing a massive wedding and inviting _everyone_ , I swear to god. Also, can I have, like, a plus-twenty? The whole of the Aces are coming and you can’t say no because I already told ‘em. I wanna see little Jacky-boy all grown up in his smart tux and Bittle in a pink and floofy wedding dress. Don’t say you’ve never imagined it. I know you have. Uh, wait, on second thoughts, probably not in the same way I have. Never mind. Third of all, dibs on best man. C’mon Jack. You gotta. Look into your heart. You know it to be true. I’ve already got a speech ready and plenty of your weird baby pics so you can’t say no to that either. And fourth of all…congratulations. Really. You deserve to be happy.”

Kent breathes in, deep and slow.

“I’m happy for you,” he says earnestly, probably chewing his lower lip and fiddling with the hem of his shirt. Jack can almost see it: Kent, sitting in an empty apartment with his cat lying across his knees and the television playing in the background next to stacks of used pizza boxes. “Anyway, I’m flying over to Providence and slugging you a good ‘un in the gut if I’m not the best man. Gonna go now, these abs don’t chisel themselves, y’know. Catch ya later, Zimms.”

Jack doesn’t realise he’s smiling until his cheeks kind of hurt and his stomach is pleasantly warm. He chooses ‘save,’ tucks his phone back into the pocket of his jeans, and goes to the kitchen to help Bitty put blueberries into the pancake mix.

“So, apparently we’re actually going to have a wedding now,” says Jack.

Bitty honest-to-god squeals, launching himself at Jack, and Jack catches him, laughing into Bitty’s soft hair. “Oh my gosh,” says Bitty. “Oh my gosh, there’s so much planning! And the invites! And the food! Can we have ice sculpture swans? Ooh, maybe we can get married on the rink! It’ll be symbolic and stuff! And we can skate towards each other in slow-motion and I’ll do a quad lutz into your welcoming embrace and Chowder can give us our rings whilst he rides to us in Zamboni! It’s gonna be so romantic!”

“Maybe not the Zamboni part,” says Jack. Bitty pouts. Jack kisses it off his face and then he’s not pouting anymore. “I don’t know how I’m going to tell Shitty he’s not going to be my best man, though. Poor guy’s going to be crushed, but I’m being blackmailed with the threat of getting punched in the spleen by the captain of the Aces, so I’m not going to risk that.”

Bitty raises his eyes knowingly for a split second, and then he smiles and returns to folding the blueberries into the pancake batter with his wooden spoon. “Tell him in French—”

“Québécois.”

“— _French._ It’ll soften the blow.”

“I don’t know if you’re evil or just a genius,” says Jack. “Or both. Probably both.”

Bitty giggles and smacks Jack on the butt with a clean spatula. He doesn’t deny it, notes Jack.

“Come on, honey,” Bitty says. “These pancakes aren’t going to cook themselves.”

 

*****

 

With a horrible, sinking feeling in his stomach, Shitty copies and pastes Jack’s latest message into Google Translate.

_Désolé, vous ne serez pas mon garçon d'honneur. #BlameKent._

“Jack Zimmermann-Bittle!” yells Shitty, shaking his fist to the ceiling, even though he might be grinning the tiniest bit. “I detest you. I absolutely detest you. Come on, Bits, you’d better not have chosen a maid of honour yet. I’m counting on you.”

Somewhere in a cosy apartment one state away, cuddled up on the couch in swathes of blankets and a gorgeous boy wrapped around him, Jack sneezes. An ominous shiver runs down his spine.

“Bless you,” mumbles Bitty into Jack’s chest, tilting his head up so he can kiss Jack’s collarbone. Like an afterthought, he adds, “Love you.”

“I bet you say that to all the rising NHL players with nice abs and perfect asses and a five hat-trick season,” says Jack.

Bitty mock-gasps. “You got me!” he says, holding his hands up in surrender, and then he lowers his eyelids and says, “Now, what are you going to do with me?”

“Well,” begins Jack, and then the words disappear from Jack’s mouth as Bitty climbs onto his lap and Jack’s thinking of nothing except Bitty, Bitty, Bitty.

 

 

—and then:

**0/i.**

It’s some time in the middle of summer, sweltering hot. Jack is nearly eighteen; there’s a burn starting to prickle at his shoulders, his ice lolly is melting down his arm, and he’s so in love.

“You think we’ll always be like this?” he asks.

Kent looks at him and he’s so gorgeous, he’s brighter than the goddamn sun. Jack thinks—Jack thinks it’s impossible to love someone like this, but nothing must be impossible because he is, he’s so in love with Kent that when Kent leans forward and presses their foreheads together and licks the blue syrup off Jack’s mouth, Jack’s heart stutters and hurts so bad in his chest, hurts in the good kind of way that makes his stomach feel funny and each inch of his body shiver.

Later, when Jack is lying in his bed with Kent’s legs tangled up in his and the moonlight drenching his skin in silver tulle, he realises Kent never gave him an answer. But he squeezes Kent’s hand under the covers and knows it doesn’t matter because sometimes, some things don’t need words. That is what he tells himself when he drifts off to the sound of Kent breathing against his chest and the mutterings of too many thoughts in his head.

 

 

**0/ii.**

“You got drafted,” says Jack, “and you didn’t fucking think to tell me?”

“I was going to,” Kent says, and it sounds like an excuse, a shitty apology, because if he really cared, he wouldn’t— “You could come with me. Please.”

Jack thinks of Kent, and his head hurts. He feels tiny half-whites, half-reds, lodged in his throat, and however much he tries to swallow it down, shutting away the horrible voices, he thinks of Kent. He thinks of Kent; he thinks about this beautiful perfect boy with the prettiest eyes he’s ever seen and a cute little cowlick that never seems to stay down, and the downturned sneer of his lips and the bitter taste if and when Jack kisses the words, _I never wanted you, Zimms, I never needed you,_ out of his mouth. He thinks of Kent; he feels the fading marks on his neck and the phantom kisses on every single part of his skin, and he soaks it all in like a bottle overflowing.

“Kent,” Jack says, holding his phone tightly, “I can’t, now, can I?”

“Jack,” Kent says. “Jack, Jack, Jack, please wait. You don’t understand. Please don’t hang up. Jack, please. Give me a chance.”

Kent sounds nearly as desperate as Jack feels. Then again, Kent has always been a good actor. Jack has spent his whole life pretending, but that was all it had been. Pretending. Kent really plays the part. 

Quietly, Jack says, “Kenny,” and there is static, and then, nothing.

Jack hangs up the phone and lies in his bed. It is cold and the ceiling is white. The curtains are white, his bed-sheets are white, the walls are white, and if he closes his eyes really tightly, he remembers what Kent looked like when he thought he’d loved him.

 

*****

“Hey, Jack!” says Shitty as Jack walks past the lounge of the Haus. “Kent Parson’s on TV! You guys used to be bros, right?”

Kent is laughing and smiling as people around him give him noogies on the head and high-fives. _Another win for the Aces!_  the title reads. _Kent Parson scores his second hat-trick this season, setting the Aces on a fast track to victory!_ He is surrounded by faces and bodies, his teammates, his fans and his family. He’s surrounded by all the people who love him, almost.

He looks happy. Jack doesn’t remember ever seeing him smile like that.

“Yeah, something like that,” says Jack, and he goes back to his room.


End file.
